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World of Warcraft Floats Vivendi Games
Gamasutra reports that Vivendi Universal Games posted strong revenues for the third quarter, largely thanks to some MMOG. From the article: "The previously troubled game division, which the company had earlier been attempting to sell off, saw revenues increase by 88 percent to 158 million ($189m), thanks to the global success of Blizzard's massively multiplayer role-playing game World of WarCraft. The game's success has also had a positive effect on operating profits, which rose to 7 million ($8 million), from a loss of 32 million ($37m) at the same time last year." Unrelatedly, but humorously, Joystiq reports that WoW showed up as a Jeopardy! question recently.
I saw that. It was the $2000 dollar question. And none of the contestants got it right! I mean c'mon, you'd think that college kids would know what WoW was. Of course maybe the fact that they are on Jeopardy! shows that they don't play. All the WoW addicts are too busy to leave Azeroth.
"Armed forces abroad are of little value unless there is prudent counsel at home" - Cicero
Apparently, the entire category that the Leeroy Jenkins question was found in was about computer games, however every video clip I can find ONLY shows the WoW question. Is there a clip online of all five questions? (Apparently the others were about Halo and GTA.)
Now that's news!
A solid innovative product that people actually want to buy helps a company turn a profit!
Now if only the rest of the gaming industry (I'm talking to you, EA!) would catch up, we might be able to escape the FPS monotony we've fallen into.
It seems that the popularity of a game is solely determined by the level of hype surrounding it. Halo specifically comes to mind. I'll concede that it's a solid FPS, but the level of hype surrounding the launch of Halo 2 was obscene.
I'm sorry, but there are just so many things about the gaming industry that irritate me. The companies. Overinflated prices. Overinflated gamer egos. Lack of innovation. Hype. Obscene system requirements.....
Here's what I've been playing in the past year:
-More SNES/N64 games than you can shake a stick at. I'll probably buy a gamecube because Nintendo's games seem to have the greatest degree of innovation/replayability right now (and yet they're the least popular, go figure)
-Liero (hailing all the way from 1993)
-All of these downright bizarre arcade-style shooters that are strangely addictive
-Wulfram. One of the first good online games back from 2000. It's finally being actively developed once again...
-Darwinia. Another great non-photorealistic game. (Could be better to tell the truth, but a solid game nonetheless)
-Escape Velocity Series -- they've been around forever for the mac. A few have been ported to Windows. Go see what the PC world has been missing out on for over a decade!
-Freespace 2 -- One of the best space shooters ever made. Period. Made by a major studio, but enjoyed little commercial success. I can't even begin to fathom why....
-- If you try to fail and succeed, which have you done? - Uli's moose